Forum Changes - Reviewing Updates and Bugs

Yellowcastle

I'm believe it saves your place based on your login and not your regular cookies. To date, I've never lost my place in any thread.

Pepper

When I tried to edit a post today, it said "Failed to find discussion for commenting" and wouldn't let me post the edit.

I also can no longer add or remove bookmarks on any threads except for the announcement threads.

Huw

The latest from Vanilla Support with regards to the unread indicators is "Yes, we have found the cause, but as I said it's a complex multi-part fix. It's not something we can rush into production in a day. We're testing it to get it out as soon as possible. "

Chooch

Looks like the read posts issue may be resolved ?.?.?

Huw

Yes, I wondered that myself. The forum was unreachable for a short while this morning, so maybe they were applying fixes.

Chooch

Spoke too soon - had to shut down my browser and when I came back, all topics gray... boo

Huw

Yes, me too!

samiam391

@Huw- The "Whos Online" function appears to be working again. I can see everyone online now, as where before I could only see 1-2 people.

The forum "new" posts also seems to be working better. It doesn't work for posts made previously this morning, but is now updating/refreshing and marking them as new/un-read since about an hour or two ago.

Yellowcastle

Broken again?

samiam391

Yep...

Huw

Fixed again?

Chooch

@Huw Looks like the New Posts function is back - we shall see... :-)

Legoboy

Looking good so far - fingers crossed!

Any chance they might correct my unread counter on the 'Predictions' thread to show 4k rather than the 1.7k it currently shows? Was dead proud of that! ;o)

samiam391

Huw said:

Fixed again?

Yep :) Hoping it stays this way, my fingers are crossed, as well.

mountebank

Looks like it from here. Cheers.

y2josh

Is anyone having the rather insignificant (yet annoying) issue where the last word on the first line of a post gets duplicated as the first word on the second line of the post?

drdavewatford

y2josh said:

Is anyone having the rather insignificant (yet annoying) issue where the last word on the first line of a post gets duplicated as the first word on the second line of the post?

No
No

(Sorry, couldn't resist !)

Legogeek

y2josh said:

Is anyone having the rather insignificant (yet annoying) issue where the last word on the first line of a post gets duplicated as the first word on the second line of the post?

Yes, for quite some time now.
And yeah, it's insignificant but very annoying.

sidersdd

How long has the profile info been there on user's pages? I missed that update.

Yellowcastle

A couple of months....we started with Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species but then settled on Country, City, Lug, etc. ;o)

beegeedee

Don't know if this is the right place to mention this but the forum doesn't remember to use the full site for posting. As a result it reverts to the mobile site on my phone and can't post which is the second bug - cant seem to post from an iPhone on the mobile site. Prefer full site anyway but it's a pain to switch every time.

Matthew

I've got an issue with PMs not being flagged up. I've just gone onto my inbox and seen a couple with the yellow flag, but I haven't had the red number next to inbox. (I don't have emails for them anyway, as there were too many from the group PMs). Ha anyone else had this?

brickmatic

So it seems that when you read a thread now the entire thread is marked as read. This is in contrast to just the pages you look at being marked as read. To clarify, say that a thread has 2000 new posts which appear on several separate pages. You click that thread to read it, but only look at the first page with new posts. If I recall correctly, previously this would reduce the 2000 new posts number by the amount of new posts you read. Now it seems to mark all the new posts as read. Is this a new change or just something on my end? Also, is this change permanent?

Legoboy

No, it's not just you. Having just opened up a thread containing 2-3 hundred new posts, I was taken to the first page of unread posts. I immediately exited. All posts now appear to be read in the discussions page. You are right, it didn't used to do this.

y2josh

Are these flags here to stay, or are they just a test? For me, the forum's been behaving ridiculously inconsistently since they were added, not to mention the 'quote' function is now implemented in an extremely obtuse way.

Penkid11

The flags are cool, but can it be available on the mobile version.
The sad part would be if its just me who can't see them.

Matthew

The reactions are here on trial at the moment. The staff are in active discussions about whether they bring an advantage to the forum or are just an added frill we can do without.

brickmatic

I think there are too many options. All you really need is a like button and the ability to quote.

MorkMan

brickmatic said:

I think there are too many options. All you really need is a like button and the ability to quote.

I agree with what you say, @brickmatic.
Should I...
a) "like" your post?
b) "agree" with your post?
c) quote you and make a comment?
d) all of the above?

timinchicago

The flags do not seem to be working for me. When I click one it appears to register but when I view my profile it shows 0's across the board. Is this a browser issue?

y2josh

^The number in your profile is how many times people have used those particular flags for you, not how many times you've used them yourself.

timinchicago

^ Makes sense, thank you!

Brickarmor

"Flag" is bad, right? Offensive, obscene, etc? Sorry for the c. 1997 question...

brickmatic

Or is flag like in your email, where it simply means it's important or something? Although now I think the convention is to use stars instead of flags, right?

rocao

'Flag' is a method of marking a post as objectionable. Currently, you're seeing two different implementations.

There is a "flag" link directly under the poster's name, next to the timestamp. When this flag is used, it will notify the staff so that we can review the post. The notification method is more visible than the next option.

The "flag" link at the bottom right of the post was introduced as part of the new reactions (like, promote, etc) and the behavior is slightly different. First, when pressed, a drop down box will appear to select if it is being flagged as spam or abuse. If it's spam, it takes 5 votes (user presses) before it shows up in our spam queue. If it's abuse, it takes 5 votes to show up in our moderation queue, but after 10 votes, the post will be temporarily removed and awaiting moderation. Personally, I think it's a nice way to let the community to self-moderate.

We're testing them both out and will probably decide on one or the other soon.

rocao

So what are people's opinions on the "like" feature for posts and the new "Best of" link in the blue title bar?

Joseph

I'm kind of glad there's just a like button now. As for the "best of", I think it's a good way for people who just started visiting/ don't visit very often to see the "highlights" that they might normally miss, especially with the use of that "promote" feature.

Brickarmor

I don't use the "Best of" I guess because I know which threads I'm keeping up with and always scan the new ones that interest me, but it seems helpful and unobtrusive. Once I got used to the megabar "Flag/Like/Agree/Disagree/Quote" I liked the options, but it was kind of an eyesore to begin with, and now the "Like" looks lonely!

LegobrandonCP

Did @Huw remvoe the coding for the set number thing? I can't seem to get it to work properly. #xxxx or #xxxxx.

Joseph

^Works fine for me (including you post with #3222 in it); it just takes the forum a minute to apply the coding sometimes.

Matthew

^^ Usually a page refresh is needed after posting

Bandit

Question about the Spam/Abuse flags. I just noticed in my profile I have a few of these, but nothing shows up when I click on them. Presumably they're from our friend LloydZX the other day who was banned and all his posts/topics deleted. Looking at other profiles, he seemed to have flagged all kinds of posts in other topics as spam/abuse as well. Is there anyway these flags can be removed in a situation like this? Sorry if I'm being too anal about my profile. :)

Matthew

^ Sorry, it's not possible to remove reactions except your own. I assumed there would be an option in the moderator tools, but there isn't anything. If it's any consolation, plenty of the staff have been flagged as spammers/abusers too ;-)

brickmatic

^ Haha, that's funny.

Si_UKNZ

Sorry to write in this old thread but i cant create a new thread on the mobile site .... anyway, new bug ... the forum time seems to be an hour behind.

Si_UKNZ

Hmm this is very interesting .. I suspect the forum runs on a windows computer .... my windows computer currently says 13:07, while my watch and phone currently say 14:07. weird! Think there's something going on with windows computers. Maybe they think it's BST now or something?!

legomatt

Sorry to bring up an old thread, but the title seemed sorta appropriate to bring this up:

The 'new' smileys function that seems to have appeared. Is this optional? Or is it an enforced change that forum admins can't do anything about?

Reason i ask is i reeeeaally don't like the one-size-fits-all picture-based smileys (which convey abso-bloody-lutely nothing whatsoever).

Aesthetically, I find them displeasing (and somewhat difficult to make out what they even are - which is therefore self-defeating as a tool intended to show tone or mood), but that's not the biggest issue, even though I do much much MUCH prefer the creative freedom for people to write/create their own smiley styles.
It's a form of personal expression, just like any of the words we choose to write. We wouldn't like a 'forum-thesaurus' auto-dumbing-down our chosen wording to 'make things easier to read (for vocabulary-challenged)'. So likewise, if the option is there, I'd prefer not to see my choice of punctuation replaced by some homogenized crappy pictures (that don't express anything beyond 'Yellow Blob has replaced some of your typing').

Second reason. Writing certain punctuation now produces an unwanted smiley-box pop-up to facilitate said blobfaces. Or worse, the bloody auto-detector might just substitute a smileyblob into a line of text where none was even intended to be. Also, in a similar vein, the creative person is finding their hand-written personal smiley style broken into an automatic-(and wrong)-blobface with the detritus of unused/leftover punctuation marks it didn't understand scattered in its wake.

Thirdly, this unwelcome pop-up also has an infuriating habit of throwing me out of the text box i'm writing in, and into a different keyboard/webpage command mode... (now this is likely just a problem for me), but it's particularly frustrating given the bloody predicta-blobface can pop up at the merest whiff of punctuation combos... which some of us like to use to actually punctuate with... occasionally.

Grrrr.
(there should be no smileys in this post - blobface on the other hand might have other ideas).

Shib

I think i read a comment by Huw that implied he hadn't turned the smiley function on. i had one of those odd text box popups yesterday, I think it was from a : (doing hat just bought it up so it probably was) I suspect this was a Vanilla Forums update.

I tend to do smilies in text as :-) which don't seem to change to pictures on here, but i think some people like the picture ones. As long as people dont go overboard hopefully it wont be an issue

Huw

I hate graphical smileys and the add-in that's been available to provide them since the forum was launched has never been enabled. However as you have seen they seem to have made a appearance in the last week or so, presumably via some other mechanism, perhaps now core to Vanilla Forums.

I'll make enquiries in the support forum to see if we can get them removed.

cheshirecat

:neutral_face: